to you, you can seldom guess, from the way she is dressed,
from the way she behaves, from the language she uses, whether she is
the wife of what society calls a gentleman or not.

She has the knack, the inborn genius, for getting twenty sou worth out
of every franc she spends. She is no snob, does not play at At Homes,
and saves her tea and sugar, which in France are expensive luxuries.
She does not play the piano, and saves her husband's ears. She makes
her own frocks, and saves dressmakers' bills; she eats light, healthy
meals of her own make, and saves cooks' wages; she goes to bed early,
and saves her candles. She is rich, as most of us might be, not in what
she actually possesses, but in what she knows how to do without. Thanks
to that woman, a Frenchman who has L100 to spend in the year lives like
an Englishman who has an income of L500.

In the most modest little flat she has her dressing-room, out of which
she issues in the morning neatly trimmed, a perfect transformation. She
will do without a drawing-room, but never without a dressing-room, for
she understands to a supreme degree that poetry of matrimony which has
not two years to live if the apartment does not possess a
dressing-room.

Better than that, the French wife of that class will play at being an
aristocrat, if you please. She will insist on having Monsieur's
apartment and Madame's apartment quite separate, so that they shall not
be compelled to impose their society on each other if they don't feel
in the mood.

And in that very humble class of French society I know men who are
trained to knock at the door of their wives' apartments in good
Faubourg Saint-Germain style, when they wish for the company of Madame.

And if Monsieur should fail to knock at Madame's door when the latter
would be pleased to receive his attentions and enjoy the pleasure of
his company, it is just possible that she would go to her husband's
_appartements_, knock at his door gently and discreetly, and whisper:
'Did I hear you knock at my door just now, dear?'

'Silly nonsense!' some people will say.

Well, my dear friends, let me tell you that happiness is made up of
thousands of little foolish trifles of that sort.

CHAPTER XXI

THE ENGLISH WIFE

Her position--Family life less attractive and piquant in England
than in France, but more solid--The English wife is the goddess of
a beautiful home.

The Englishman is no doubt cut out to make colon